“When you get into educational politics in this state, you can throw away the R’s and the D’s,” said Rep. John Countryman, R-DeKalb, referring to Republicans and Democrats.

Countryman and Sen. Patrick Welch, D-Peru, joined forces Saturday to urge a group of DeKalb school district officials, teachers and residents to increase lobbying efforts for a statewide income tax increase, particularly within the legislatively influential Chicago districts.

House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, once again was cited as the possible barrier between legislative efforts and an increase in funding for Illinois schools.

Countryman said Chicago Democrats come close to constituting the majority of the Illinois House of Representatives and there is a need for lobbying efforts in the Chicago area.

He said he was not “trying to paint the picture that there aren’t concerns on the part of other people.” But counties such as DuPage are not as dependent on state support as others, and their citizens might be reluctant to support an income tax increase, he said.

“If you ask the question, ‘Do you favor more money for education?’ everybody is for that. But if you ask the question, ‘Do you want your income tax raised 40 percent?’ not too many people are going to be thrilled about that,” Welch said.

The two legislators called for the support of an income tax increase and agreed there is a need for constituency support. Countryman and Welch also have introduced legislation calling for an increase in new state income and a broader-based portion of general revenue funds to be directed to public education.

The bills follow the traditional two-thirds to one-third formula with resulting revenue to be distributed among all Illinois public elementary and secondary schools, colleges and universities.

Welch introduced a bill Thursday that would direct 50 percent of all new available state revenues to education. He said part of the funding would be apportioned from Gov. Jim Thompson’s proposed 18-cent-per-pack cigarette tax.

“It (the cigarette tax) is a needed tax because if we don’t have it, we’re going to have to cut everybody’s budget, including education’s,” Welch said.

Countryman focused his legislation on increasing the amount of education funding to be allocated from the Illinois base budget over a three-year period.

Under Countryman’s bill, 43 percent of all Illinois general revenue would be directed to education by 1992. Higher education would receive one-third of that amount.

“We could have passed an income tax increase last year, and the people of the state of Illinois would have accepted it. Not everybody would have liked it, but they would have accepted it because the case had been made in the media. I don’t see that same momentum building this year,” Countryman said.